


The long way home

by Ruler_of_Nope_Island



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Everybody Lives, Fluff, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 03:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15210242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruler_of_Nope_Island/pseuds/Ruler_of_Nope_Island
Summary: Harry and John try to find new ways to be after it's all over.Now with added p0rn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If there's anyone who deserve a happy ending it's these two. There's an almost lack of literary references for which I can only apologise.

Rain hammers against the windows of the cheap lodging house; outside, the roads are muddy rivers. Downstairs, their landlady is having a blazing row with another lodger and dinner is likely to be missed tonight. Often when they were at sea John had a fancy that he and Harry could speak without words; heartbeat to heartbeat, like morse code. Perhaps now they are on land and together they have lost the trick of it but he tries anyway: love, please pick up some baked potatoes from the man on the corner. They had bread and cheese and a bit of ale but a man needed something a bit more filling on a night like this.

A night like this? What does that mean to someone who’s trudged hundreds of miles south, bleeding from the hair and arse and gums? You would have thought that would have made him tougher about inclement weather, but he’s always hated the rain. Brings the mud in and their landlady’s maid wouldn’t pass muster on any of the ships he’s served. Harry mocks him about that. You and your standards, John. You can’t start doing the housework, we’re not at sea anymore. It’s women’s work. People will think it queer.

Perhaps people think it queer that they live together although some take them for father and son. Harry looks much older than his years, what with the missing teeth and fingers. John got off better, although he was the sort of man who started looking ancient at forty and then would stay the same for the rest of his life. John often observes Harry staring at himself disconsolately at the mirror.   
“Is it vain…?” he asked once.   
“No,” he said. It is not vanity to miss the man you once were or thought you were. Harry had been so handsome. 

Neither of them will set foot on a ship again. Neither has the inclination or all the necessary digits. But they had been in the navy for so very long, both of them, and they were struggling to find other ways to be. John has a job at a bookshop; Harry finds odd jobs where he can. They have enough to get by. God bless Lady Jane Franklin, that magnificent battleaxe, who fought tooth and nail like only a society lady can for pensions for the survivors. Still, the problem remains: who are they now?

Who are you, when all the people who knew you are dead or gone and the rhythms of your life removed? Harry cannot bear to leave the city. He finds wide, open spaces too distressing. He cannot sleep for the lack of familiar noise. He even misses, he says, the noises of the ice screeching against the hull. A ship is a world in miniature but that world has been cracked open and they have been scattered like so many dolls. 

Once John had offered to join Harry in his bed. To help you sleep, he’d said, and meant it. But Harry had taken it differently, become quarrelsome, and eventually stormed out to drink himself senseless in some doghole. John had cried that night; tears of anger, because he and Harry had never argued like that and it hurt worse than anything he’d ever felt. Was this what he’d meant to lay down on the ice and die for? He missed those days when it was all unspoken longing. Now they could speak, fully and truly, and sometimes found they had nothing to say to each other. 

Then Harry returned, so much the worse for drink, remorseful. He’d undressed and slipped into John’s bed, wrapping his arms around him and kissed the back of his neck.   
“I love you,” words that John had longed to hear for so many years. But not like this.  
“It’s easy to love someone in drink,” he’d said, throat raw, “But will you love me when you’re sober again?”  
“I love you,” Harry insisted. “I love you, I love you -”  
His breath was rank. Rotten teeth and raw spirits.  
“Hush now.”  
He’d rolled over and let Harry put his head on his chest. Harry had slept; John did not.

That was all a few days ago. Things had been quiet between them since. They would come home, exchange a few remarks about their respective days, eat, read, blow out the candle. Their room was a few strides across but Harry had never felt so far away. Before now he’d always thought that poets would exaggerate heartbreak; now he knows differently. 

The door opens; Harry comes in and John’s heart leaps because he is carrying a small, steaming package and because he is smiling.   
“I don’t think we’re getting dinner tonight,” he says, “So I went back out.”  
“Into that rain?”  
Harry is soaked through.  
“Yeah. Would you mind getting these ready?”

John keeps his face towards the fire as Harry changes. The potatoes, although a bit undercooked, go down well with the bit of hard cheese and the ale. And Harry smiles through it all.

“Good day?” John inquires.   
“Short day. We couldn’t do anything because of the rain.”  
“What did you do instead?”  
“Went around to Mr. Wately’s house. His missus made us lunch and we just talked all day.”  
“About the journey?”  
“About nothing. It was good.”  
“Good.”  
“Missus Wately asked about my living arrangements,” Harry says, polishing off the last of his potato. “And Mr Wately said he didn’t think bachelors could be happy, living the way that they did, without a wife to keep house and keep them warm at night.”  
“I bet that didn’t please Mrs. Wately.”  
“She flicked him round the head with a dishtowel.”  
“Fair enough.”  
“Then I came home, and went straight back out again, to get us potatoes.”  
“In this weather it makes you a hero worthy of any praises.”  
“I didn’t mind it. All I was thinking was: I do have that. I have someone who keeps a home for me. But -” he pauses, looks John in the eyes, “Perhaps I could have someone to keep me warm at night, too.”

They’d never really talked about this, aside from the quarrel. They’d both wanted to, back on the ships, but there was too much to lose. Then, after: a few quiet squeezes and rubs, but they’d always been so shy of each other. Years worth of longing had frozen them both into inaction. Now John’s mouth is dry with want. He reaches into his mind for some poem or something to say but Harry’s mouth touches his and his heart sings in words that cannot be written down.


	2. The one with the sex in it

Suddenly Harry is burning from the inside. The kiss is everything - not because it was his first with another man but because it was his first with John and John was his everything. He wants - what does he want? To do everything that he knows of, everything that was possible. He wants whatever it is so much it aches.

You know, say the guilty, dirty parts of him, what you want him to do with you. To you. Harry’s cock is hard already, just from this soft and gentle kiss. He pushes John onto his back and straddles him, hoping to find the other man was as excited as him. And he is. His John wanted him, missing teeth and fingers and all. 

It had been easy when they were both whole, to not, but still to want, and to think on what might be. He knew he was handsome, and John was handsome too, with his broad shoulders and warm, deep voice. In his hammock, in the quiet, he would take himself in hand and imagine it was John stroking him, kissing the back of his neck. 

“Come on,” John says in the incredible now, “Get your clothes off.”

Harry has to turn away. They’d undressed before each other so many times but never had he felt so naked. 

“Harry,” says John, urgent and soft, “Let me see you. I want to see you. I’ve been dreaming of this for years.”

When I was handsome, Harry thinks, suddenly panicked. When I was young and lovely. 

It is Hickey’s voice in his head that says this. He has gotten into the habit of thinking all the thoughts he was ashamed of in Hickey’s voice - he had been seduced, like poor stupid Mr. Gibson, not bodily but by what Hickey knew about what two men could do together and how. And Hickey had told him, in great detail, because Harry had asked. And not just about hands or rubbing but about mouths and buggery. He can still see the glint of Hickey’s teeth as he told Harry how good it was, really, to have a cock inside you. Because if it wasn’t good, why would men keep doing it?

“Harry,” John says, leaning forward and touching his arm, “We don’t have to -”

“I want to,” Harry shakes his head, trying to keep any thoughts of that monster away from this sacred moment, “I just - can we blow out the candle?”

John sighs but does so.

“Come under the blankets at least before you freeze, at least.”

Harry crawls awkwardly into John’s arms. His cock pokes John’s thigh. His - his lover chuckles and takes him in hand and kisses him again. Which is good because Harry moans into his mouth.  
“Easy now,” John’s voice is low, just like he’d dreamed, but with a heat to it that he would have never suspected. Then his cock is stroked, too gently, and he twitches.

“Harry, love. Show me how you like it.”

It’s difficult with his missing fingers but he manages to guide John’s hand and it is so very good that he doesn’t last long at all. 

“Thank you,” Harry whispers into John’s neck. Still lightheaded, he begins to move down John’s body.

“Should have got a cloth,” John mutters, in his hennish way. 

“Just wipe your hand on the sheet.”

Whatever complaint John is about to make vanishes when Harry takes him into his mouth. It’s strange but this is John Harry is doing it to and it doesn’t feel dirty at all.

“Jesus,” John chokes out. “Harry. Please.”

He doesn’t last long either, thighs twitching and gasping as his hands grip Harry’s shoulders.

“Harry,” he whispers, “Harry, that was - really?”

Harry has just spat out his mouthful onto the floor.

“What was I supposed to do with it?”

John makes a noise of disgust.

“I hear a real gentleman swallows,” Harry says, nuzzling John’s hip. “But if you wanted that, you should have fallen in love with an officer.”

“Come here, you dirty bugger.”

John’s arms wrap around him. The kiss he gets on the back of his neck is so much better than he ever could have imagined.

“What the fuck took us so long?” he asks, burrowing under the blankets. John manages to laugh and make a noise of annoyance at the same time.

“Language. I didn’t spend all that time teaching you how to read for you to speak filth.”

“Next time,” Harry says, feeling bold, “You can put your cock inside me. How’s that for filth?”  
“Oh,” John says. “I would. Hm.”

Harry laughs because it is the second time in one night he’s managed to leave John, his lover and his heart and his favourite gabby old man, utterly speechless.


End file.
